


blossom in ribcage

by torrentialTriages



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: people not being given the time to grieve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 19:58:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10793697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torrentialTriages/pseuds/torrentialTriages
Summary: i had a friend who / had made a flag day / blood on their hands from shards of a heartbreaka heart of stone, rind so tough it's crazy, that's why they call me the avocado, baby (set between desperate measures and boléro)





	blossom in ribcage

**Author's Note:**

> title and summary taken from avocado, baby by los campesinos!

Eiffel and Kepler find Jacobi curled up under the communications room control panel in the aftermath of the shootout, glaring dry-eyed into the empty space between him and their legs.

“Jacobi?” The handcuffs in Eiffel’s hand clink, lost in the hum of the engine. The handgun Minkowski had pressed upon him is massively heavy in his palm.

“Fuck you,” Jacobi mutters hoarsely.

“Jacobi, you gotta come with-”

“Fuck. You,” he spits, curling up even tighter into himself. Eiffel looks askance at Kepler, hoping he’ll help somehow.

“Jacobi.” Kepler’s voice is... not resigned, but it has none of its former trappings of frivolity and self-grandeur in this moment. Jacobi turns away. Kepler crouches to meet him, cuffs jangling. “Daniel. Listen to me.”

“Sir,” Jacobi almost mouths to the wall.

“I’m ordering you to follow their instructions, Jacobi,” Kepler continues, voice almost foreign with how flat and serious it is. “Do it for me.” They wait for an eternity.

Then Jacobi gets up painfully slowly and holds out his wrists, not looking at either of them. “Just fucking do it.”

Eiffel cuffs him in silence, then leads them out of the room.

“Thanks,” mumbles Eiffel as he follows them down the hall, not entirely sure how to react.

Kepler gives him a look of highbrow disgust. “I’m only following orders,” he sneers. Jacobi doesn’t make eye contact with either of them, face pinched with pain and shock, leaning into Kepler’s shoulder as they stumble along. Anyone looking at his hands would be able to see them tremble minutely in front of him.

Kepler and Jacobi register the footsteps before Eiffel, and only then he realizes by the way their heads snap up expectantly that oh, no, someone was coming and that someone could only be-

“Eiffel?” Jacobi stops dead in his tracks, hackles raised as Minkowski and her haggard eyes round the corner, not scared, but wary, then guilty as she takes in the ragged group. She lowers her gun, eventually letting her hand drop to her side. “Oh... I...” The silence hangs, a brittle wall between them.

“You. You killed Maxwell,” Jacobi says shakily, shattering it. He is failing miserably at swallowing the wet fury feeding on him, and Kepler immediately moves into Jacobi’s way, clamping down on Jacobi’s forearm tightly. “Get _off_ me.”

“I’m sorry, Jacobi,” Minkowski tells him, looking anywhere but at him, and her hollow words make everything _so much worse_ and now he just can’t fucking take it.

"You _killed Maxwell_ ," he screams, voice careening in shreds off the walls of the Hephaestus as he struggles to claw through the wall Kepler’s made of his body, he doesn’t care he’s not quite human anymore (and was he ever), “ _Don’t fucking tell me you’re sorry it doesn’t do shit you fucking killed her I’m going to fucking_ destroy _you and it won’t be half as merciful as anything you_ deserve _you fucking-_ ”

Minkowski just lifts her face to the ceiling and stands there.

“Jacobi,” murmurs Kepler, tense, almost lost under the echoes the walls throw back at them.

“ _Let go of me_ ,” he shrieks, thrashing in Kepler’s iron vise of a grip. “ _She deserves to be fucking_ tortured _for it and if you’re not going to then_ I _will-_ ”

“Jacobi,” Kepler barks, wrenching him back, and Jacobi chokes audibly on his fury, staring up at Kepler with all the hurt and anger and wasted strength he’s ever contained. Eiffel and Minkowski stare too, not sure how to respond, or if they even should. Kepler holds him close, grip tightening, and hisses, “Now is  _not_ the time.”

“ _Sir,_ ” Jacobi pleads insistently. Minkowski seems to come back to her senses, and readies her gun again.

“Jacobi, Kepler, we’re going to lock you up,” she snaps tersely. “Separately. Don’t try anything or I _will_ shoot.”

Jacobi’s eyes, when he turns on her, are positively venomous. “What if I want you to?” he snarls sourly.

“Jacobi,” repeats Kepler.

Minkowski sighs. “Save it for another day, Jacobi.”

Jacobi has nothing but poison for her the entire walk there, and shoots her one last glare when they lock him up in the broom closet. Eiffel knows, he swears that the sight of Jacobi and all the broken, ruined anger and grief on his face will haunt him ‘til the day he dies. He doesn’t think that’ll be long, though, considering how much the star is troubling them. He hopes they’ll survive. All of them.

 

The next time they see each other it’s at the funeral, and it doesn’t get better, but it didn’t necessarily mean that it was going to get worse.

Of course, “worse” was relative.


End file.
